https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/14/india-lifts-download-ban-on-vlc/
India has lifted the download ban on VLC, more than nine months after it mysteriously blocked the official website of the popular media playback software in the South Asian market. VideoLAN, the popular software's developer, filed a legal notice last month seeking an explanation from the nation's IT and Telecom ministries for the block order.
The Ministry of Electronics and IT has removed its ban on the website of VLC media player, New Delhi-based advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation, which provided legal support to VideoLAN, said on Monday. VideoLAN confirmed the order.
"This ban was put into place without any prior notice and without giving VideoLAN the opportunity of a hearing, which went against the 2009 Blocking Rules and the law laid down by the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. This was strange because VLC Media Player is an open-source software which is used by nearly 80 million Indians," IFF said in a statement.
Indian telecom operators began blocking VideoLAN's official website, where it lists links to downloading VLC, in February of this year, VideoLAN president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf told TechCrunch in an earlier interview. India is one of the largest markets for VLC.
[...] Last month, VideoLAN and Internet Freedom Foundation used legal means to get answers and redressal surrounding the ban. India's IT ministry never made public the order of the ban, yet all telecom operators in the country complied with it. In its legal notice last month, VideoLAN sought a copy of the blocking order.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 17 2022, @04:47AM
How many people did the ban actually affect? People who know and love VLC surely had alternative ways to download it. Were people using Linux affected at all? It's in the repositories, so unless the repositories were also blocked, the ban was meaningless. And, of course, people who don't know and love VLC probably didn't care at all. A few people may have become curious, and went in search of VLC to find out what all the fuss was about.
Was the ban effective, or just another meaningless gesture by government?